[svlug] MkLinux

[Dan Bethe]

On Tue, 10 Nov 1998, Lisa Meserve wrote:

> I have all the rmps, etc, about 150MB of data, yet, there was no installer.

	it's called "rpm", btw.  'redhat package manager'.
	if there's no MacOS-based installer then try finding a boot image
to write to a floppy disk.  it might not require you to have a MacOS
boot volume.
	i386 Redhat has a file called 'boot.img' that is exactly the
capacity of a pc-and-mac-style high density floppy disk (1440K), and you
write it straight on to the floppy device.  just like you do with MacOS's
'shrinkwrap' or that apple floppy disk utility.  i dun know if shrinkwrap
will properly write a non-MacOS-made image.  crazy HFS filesystem.
	then when you reboot with it in the drive, perhaps your Mac's ROM
will boot it like it would an HFS MacOS floppy.  i dunno.  MacOS ROM
contains HFS driver code, so maybe you need to copy a plain linux kernel
image (vmlinux) to an HFS-formatted floppy, but without Open Firmware i
dont know how you can tell it to boot it.  your MacOS ROM will be
expecting a MacOS executable called "System".  your MacOS rom controls all
the booting -- there was nothing in Macs lower-level than the MacOS ROMs
until Open Firmware came with the PCI macs.
	when i tried Linux-PPC, which wont work on your machine coz your
6100/60 av has no Open Firmware (comes with PCI-based macs, not your
Nubus-based mac), I had to just copy the kernel image file (not a floppy
image file) (called vmlinux) to an HFS volume and tell Open Firmware to
boot that rather than booting the MacOS ROM.
	i dont expect any of this will make much sense, because it's
technically involved, took me many days of reading, Apple doesn't
officially "want" you to know about it, and i'm not explaining it very
well.  perhaps if you read it enough times you can sort out the pieces.
	and why on EARTH would you download an operating system???? that's
why God invented the cdrom, not to spam Planet Earth repeatedly every time
you mess up, dispose of it, or upgrade......

"We each pay a fabulous price for our visions of paradise,
    but a spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission."
        This email licensed under the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy). 


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